Adler's Eye

Adler's Eye

"This is the most polarizing piece of furniture I own—people either love it or hate it," Sasha Adler says as she lovingly pats an intricately carved wooden cabinet, one with a scalloped top edge, a chain lock, and corner spokes that point to the ceiling like the turrets of a castle. Is it an ancient Moroccan vessel where princesses once stored spices? A medieval dollhouse? “It’s Indian,” she says with the certainty of a woman who knows her way around an antiques shop, which, as co–design director at Nate Berkus Associates in Chicago, Adler does. She discovered the cabinet in the firm’s storage archives and persuaded her boss to try it in his dining room, but he wasn't convinced it worked. "Nate eventually gave it to me as a housewarming gift—I think because I'm the only one who appreciates it!"